During the early 60's, it was my grandmother's favorite TV show and I remember one time she, my mother and my aunt went to NYC to be in the audience for a taping. I watched their excitement as they told the family about their experience meeting the host, Bill Cullen, and "almost" making it as a contestant (the way they played the game was so much different from what I've seen today.)
Many years have passed and today, my only awareness about the show comes from seeing it at my parents' house, when I'd visit my mother early in the day. I think my mother was attracted to the model she'd always talk about ("James".) The howling, screaming and audience applause I'd hear would make me wonder how anyone could watch the show day after day. How many times could you hear "Come on down!" and "It's a brand new car!" without going bonkers, in addition to watching plastic looking models, male and female, mostly Caucasian, smiling, posing and fawning over a procession of products and prizes?
Day in and day out. Buzzers beeping, yelling and applause, screams of joy mixed with screams of grief, jumping, arm waving, wild dancing, music and sound effects, repeated every day; $550, $900, $950, $951-and the price is $1099!!!!!!!!! Repeat again. Repeat again tomorrow. Mindless entertainment, cheap and easy to produce. Numbing minds around the world, reinforcing the bad behavior people show when they are trying to "win" by getting something they never earned. Commercials are interspersed during the viewing as advertisers take advantage of their captive audience with commercials for constipation problems and supplemental Medicare, further manipulating the mesmerized minds of mediocrity.
I'd watch my mother watching the show and I'd think to myself, what a waste. But she, and millions of others of her age, younger, and older, continue being entranced by the guise of winning prizes on a TV game show, as if winning a TV set, a kitchen stove, a bedroom set or maybe even "a brand new car!" would be the dream to which they aspire-their life's goal. Living through someone else's life experience.
"Why don't you try reading a book, or a magazine?" I'd ask my mother at times, and her standard answer was that she fell asleep when trying to read. "How about painting or doing a puzzle?"
"Don't you love Drew Carey?" she'd ask.
"No, actually I find him annoying, and I never thought he was funny or talented even when he had his own TV show."
Nothing I could do would separate my mother from her affinity to "The Price is Right"; its "attraction" had entranced my family for decades. Habits are hard to break. The show is a very fictional "American" dream; lots of fake applause, hollering and hooting at the wins and the losses, hype and over-glamorization of the "material," rewards for poor sportsmanship (like going $1 over the highest bidder) and getting easy money and prizes for nothing. Game shows have been on TV for decades, and whatever the premise, the outcome for all is still the same. Winning is everything (and be thankful you got on the show in the first place!)
My mind wandered. The tangents; what does the world think of Americans if perhaps "The Price is Right" is all they see of us? Is it any wonder why so many Americans (in particular, the elderly) have minds that have turned to "mush", if they are relegated to watching this program on a daily basis? How much could be accomplished if shows like this went off the air, and the money could go to areas that could truly make life better for people? Or if people would use their time productively for themselves, by enriching their knowledge or volunteering?
Minds turned to mush. I wonder how many "The Price is Right" viewers are Trump supporters?
